California Set to Mandate Childhood Vaccines

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I was gonna put this In The News, but (sadly) vaccinations are debatable (because people have too much time on their hands and want to argue science when they could be using their time more wisely, like coming up with cures for cancer, ways to stop deforestation, helping end extinction of important animals, fixing the GD government, getting paid maternity leave, but fine, lets waste scientists times to make them CONTINUE to argue about vaccines)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Schoolchildren in California would be required to be vaccinated unless there is a medical reason not to do so under a sweeping bill approved by the State Assembly on Thursday. The measure would end exemptions for personal or religious reasons, routinely requested by parents opposed to vaccines.

The legislation would make California the largest state by far with such requirements for childhood vaccinations as it joins West Virginia and Mississippi, which have had similar laws for years.

Public health officials hope other states will follow California’s lead, though similar measures in some legislatures have been defeated this year.

“We hope and expect we will be a model to get us back to where we should be, which is that cases of measles and other preventable diseases do not need to be something we live with,” said State Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician who wrote the bill.
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Despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines are an essential public health measure, the number of unvaccinated children in California has been rising, partly because personal or religious exemptions have been easy to obtain. Parents who decline vaccines for their children and take heart from the fact that most other children are protected have helped create pockets in particular schools and communities where the overall immunity level is dangerously low, doctors say.

“We cannot accept this as the new normal,” Mr. Pan said, adding that the legislation “ensures we will protect all children.”

The measure has been one of the most closely watched and divisive in the State Capitol this year, with weeks of emotional debates and hundreds of families who oppose vaccines filling the halls, together with their children.

The State Senate approved the bill this year, but will need to vote again to include subsequent amendments

The disagreement here has been intensely personal, with parents on opposing sides coming to the Capitol with babies in tow, holding them in slings while offering emotional testimony to lawmakers. And during an hourlong debate in the Assembly on Thursday, nearly every legislator who rose to speak invoked his or her experience as a parent.

The debate has been unusually mordant. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled through the state this spring, screening a documentary purporting to show the dangers of vaccinations for children. After he likened mandatory vaccines to the Holocaust, he later apologized. And this month, a Nation of Islam leader denounced inoculation requirements, comparing such a mandate to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

Mr. Pan said he has received repeated threats, so worrisome that he had additional security for several events.

Despite the intense lobbying by each side, the science supporting vaccines is settled, and opponents remain only a small if vocal minority. Doctors overwhelmingly recommend childhood vaccines — which have been credited with the elimination or near-elimination of diseases like measles, mumps and rubella — and many pediatricians will not accept families who resist vaccines into their practices.

Medical studies that claim to show a link between vaccines and autism have been discredited or retracted, yet some parents and others cling to them as evidence that their children should not get the shots. But if too many people in a given community are not vaccinated, doctors say, the “herd immunity” factor that protects vulnerable people and others from these diseases breaks down.

After a measles outbreak that began at Disneyland late last year, lawmakers and public health officials began searching for ways to increase immunization in areas with low rates of inoculation. Across the state, only about 3 percent of children have not had vaccinations, but in some schools about half of all students have not gotten the vaccines recommended by most doctors.

“The majority of the state does the right thing, but you have these clusters of really low rates, and if there’s a vulnerable population in any way there, you can have serious problems quickly,” said Dr. Dean A. Blumberg, an authority on pediatrics and infectious diseases from the medical center at the University of California, Davis. “The parental choice question is big and important, but what is more important here is individual and larger public health. There is no doubt in the scientific community that there are no dangers in vaccines.”

Under the bill, families who do not want their children to receive vaccines for a nonmedical reason would have to home-school their children. Children who are currently in school without vaccines could remain, though they would be expected to show proof of vaccination when they enter kindergarten and seventh grade.

Some vaccine opponents predict a rise in home-schooling as a result of the measure.

Gov. Jerry Brown has not taken a public position on the bill but is widely expected to sign it. “The governor believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit, and any bill that reaches his desk will be closely considered,” Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Mr. Brown, said in a statement.

Opponents have promised several legal challenges, including a claim that the legislation would violate children’s right to a free education, which is enshrined in the state Constitution. They have already begun several recall campaigns against legislators who pushed for the bill, including Mr. Pan.

Carl Krawitt, whose 7-year-old son, Rhett, is in remission from leukemia and was medically prohibited from receiving vaccines, argued that it was children like his son whose rights were being violated by those who refuse to vaccinate; unvaccinated children could pass along potentially deadly diseases to Rhett.

“The social impact of not having children vaccinated is truly life-threatening for some,” Mr. Krawitt said. “We can take personal freedoms to such an extreme,” he said, adding that he was not surprised that the measure had engendered so much controversy.

But Christina Hildebrand, the founder of A Voice for Choice, a nonprofit organization that has lobbied against the bill, said, “Parental freedom is being taken away by this because the fear of contagion is trumping it.”

In part because of the opposition, lawmakers amended the bill to allow doctors to weigh family history when considering medical exemptions, and softened the provisions that would require children without vaccines to be removed from school. In committee hearings, the votes have largely split along party lines, with Democrats — a majority in the Legislature and throughout California — favoring the bill and Republicans against it.

(bolded parts are my emphasis for the main points)

BE STILL MY FLUTTERING HEART. I never thought I would ever say this, but go California! Also never thought WV, Miss and California would be in the same sentence for legislation.

This would be awesome. I drank the Jenny McCarthy koolaid at one point but then someone gave me a non organic, GMO laden beer and woke my ass up. I remember being on forums with women trying to go about getting religious exemptions even though they weren't religious. I think the ONLY valid reason is a medical one. There are too many immunocompromised people that cannot get vaccinated that depend on others.

I'm trying to think, I believe it's the smallpox vaccine that you cannot get if you are allergic to eggs or eczema, it's the one that leaves the weird scar because you get poked a bunch of times. I couldn't get it because eczema. If that shit broke out again I'd be screwed, although I hope modern medicine would be able to treat me if I caught it. Too many people that can't get the vaccines can't get them for bigger reasons...like chemo. They have NO immune system because it's being attacked trying to rid them of cancer. I remember an SVU episode with Hilary Duff where the kid died from measles and they went after the parent that caused the outbreak by not vaccinating. I support that. Because that parent was an irresponsible fuckhead, they are responsible for the death of another and should be charged as so.

We had mandatory childhood vaccinations here in east Germany way back when and those childhood diseases were almost eradicated. Then the reunification happened, at some point they became non-mandatory and now we're having outbreaks of measles and shit again.

I'd be for them making it mandatory here again. (Except of course for people who can't get them for medical reasons but I really doubt anyone ever would make them get them). So, good for California.

I'm so torn on this. I don't like the government telling me how to parent my children. However, due to Emery's inability to have some vax, due to her reaction as a baby (I've posted about it before), we rely on the herd immunity to keep her safe.

I think that not vaxing is irresponsible, if there is not a medical reason. So, don't think I am anti-vax. I'm just not sure how I feel, yet, about the government making it law. It will result in more home schooling, which isn't always a great choice. And these non-vax children will still be out in public, still out at Disney World or wherever.

I don't know what the right answer is, except for certain parents to just get their kids vaccinated if they can.